


rhythm of a trembling heart

by Trilies



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Canon Compliant Bullets, Canon Universe, F/F, KHRween, KHRween 2020, Teen Crush, Vampire Bites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27283489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trilies/pseuds/Trilies
Summary: After getting shot by a bullet that temporarily gives her the cravings of a vampire, Haru is in a predicament of how to weather it out. Fortunately, that's around the time that her fantastic friend and more fantastic illusionist Chrome drops by and offers to help. The feelings fluttering in Haru's chest are totally normal, being caught in such a situation... and, if they're not, she can blame the vampire bullet, right?In other words: vampirism is queer culture. Or, at least, sometimes it and a smart mouthed kid in a suit are all you need to make you realize you're queer.
Relationships: Chrome Dokuro/Miura Haru
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: KHR Rarepair Week Halloween Mini-Event 2020





	rhythm of a trembling heart

"Vampire bullet?" Haru asks, with a curious tilt of her head and one finger pressed daintily along the curve of her jaw.   
  
Reborn hums out an affirmative, lightly nudging the body of the latest goon who's tried to show up at Tsuna's house. The unfortunate thing for said goon, of course, is that Tsuna isn't even here. He's been dragged off into a turf war between Hibari and some very optimistic two bit thugs at a neighboring school. Reborn had called it "mediation practice". Tsuna had said "this is retaliation for not getting an A on that test, isn't it?"   
  
So. Tsuna hadn't been at home, and Nana had gone shopping. Haru has had free roam to the house for at least a few years now, before they all graduated middle school, and it's no different now. Nana always seems happy to see her, and for an extra hand around the house. So she'd just ducked in... and walked right into an assassination attempt.   
  
Or, well. Haru had _thought_ it was an assassination attempt.   
  
While she checks the pulse and breathing of the would-be assassin, all _genuine_ practice for herself, Haru glances over where Reborn stands on the other side of her. At the quiet request, Reborn obliges her and continues to explain. "It's only something I've heard along the grapevine, so I'm surprised that a small family like this was able to get their hands on it so quickly... but it's essentially a bullet infused with certain flames that affects your body. Sometimes it's Storm, sometimes it's Cloud... Apparently the base bullet is rather flexible and can work with a few flames. It all results in the bullet making your body lose certain nutrients, and gives you such a craving for blood that you'll eventually attack someone over it."   
  
"Aaaaah, I see." Haru nods, not seeming to mind the fact that the bullet in question entered her shoulder just a few minutes ago. Her clothes aren't even torn, so, honestly... She can't be _too_ upset. Reborn certainly doesn't seem to be. "Does it eventually run out like the Dying Will bullet, or that one depression bullet?"   
  
"It does, but it's going to take some time, and it works fast. You'll have to find a way to work around it until it eases up."  
  
Well, that's not reassuring... especially because Haru can already feel an itch beneath her skin, and an ache in her jaw as her fangs no doubt elongate to help better suit the vampire-like needs she's now afflicted with. That's probably a sign of a Mist flame, if she had to guess.... Twisting reality around to suit its wishes. Sighing, she flops down onto the ground. "Maybe if I'm lucky, Mama will have some leftover raw meat in the fridge..." It's the only thing she can think of that might sate the urge in her until it inevitably wears off.   
  
Haru only has so long to get partially down the stairs, letting Reborn handle the body, before she's interrupted, however. It's just a simple knock at the door, quiet and one time only. Any other busy household with numerous children in it would miss the sound, but Nana never has... and, in the absence of the kids, Haru can hear it clear as daylight. Warily, fully prepared to slam the door shut in case her body starts acting up, Haru peers out. "Hello-? Oh! Chrome-chan!"   
  
With that same quietly intense stare of hers in place as always, Chrome tilts her head ever so slightly to the side. "Hello," she murmurs softly, her hands curling against one another in front of herself. Even after a few years of being friends with all of them, sometimes she's still so shy. Haru really loves this cute part of her; it makes her heart flutter in delight every time.  
  
"Weren't you going to go with Tsuna and the others to handle that thing with Hibari? I thought you would be useful for sure in handling that kind of thing!"   
  
"....I decided to come back." Chrome scrapes her shoe against the small path leading up to the door, and Haru lets her have a moment. Sometimes, while Chrome doesn't explain every single thing, she eventually decides to go through with it. This has been especially true as she's become more relaxed with all of them. Haru is glad that she's reached even that point, honestly... "Mukuro decided to get involved with everything, and I didn't want to deal with that."   
  
Haru snorts out a laugh before she can smack her hand over her mouth. That is also something that has changed over the years. Mukuro is still someone that Chrome adores, along with everyone else from Kokuyo Land, but... She's become someone, once again, with her own interests and desires, instead of waiting for something to do, some way to make herself useful. Sometimes, that means turning away from Mukuro causing trouble and relaxing elsewhere instead of getting dragged into the fray.  
  
Well, while Haru truly is glad for her... "I'm sorry, Chrome-chan, but Maman's not home," she says sheepishly. "And I can't really help, because, well..." What can she do? Haru explains what had just happened.   
  
Even more used to the strange and wild world that is the mafia and overall criminal underworld, considering who she lived with for no small while, Chrome takes everything in patiently, and nods. "I see," she says, when Haru is finished. Despite saying that, however, she follows it up with, "May I come in?"   
  
...Sometimes, with Haru's friends, especially the friends she's made by being friends with _Tsuna_ , one has to learn that simple stubbornness and what seems like completely ignoring the facts laid out on the table is just something that happens. There's no fighting it. Haru opens the door and lets her in.   
  
It turns out to be a good thing, because once the door clicks shut behind her, Chrome says, "I think I could help with the vampire bullet's effects."   
  
Haru clasps her hands together, stars in her eyes. It hadn't even occurred to her, but-! "Could you really, Chrome-chan!?"   
  
"Mhm. I mean..." Following Haru to the kitchen where they can better have this kind of conversation over tea or something, Chrome thinks carefully over what she's going to say. "For a vampire... They have to feed on a person, right?"   
  
"That's right." Letting Chrome take a seat right at the table, Haru bustles about the kitchen getting a pot of tea ready. "In all the novels and comics, it's always really dramatic and romantic, that kind of thing..." She lets the water start boiling, turning back to Chrome with a sigh. "A handsome man, living a lonely immortal life, convinced he's a monster... Finding a beautiful woman through a misunderstanding, or bad timing... And her opening her heart to him, and making his own undead pulse beat once more! But that's not what the vampire bullet is like at all! There's no big gothic castle, or tragic backstory, or me getting to turn into a giant wolf or a ginormous bat! I don't even get to angst because I've been barred from the sun! That's not how the bullet works!" By the end of it, she has her fists clasped in front of her and is waving them about in frustration. It's not fair! If she's going to be a vampire, there should at least be some drama to it!  
  
One of the nice things about Chrome is that she lets her rant as long as she needs to. Haru appreciates it. Back when she was in middle school, she knows she was always the oddball out - too emotive, too hyperfocused in things like making costumes, throwing herself into gymnastics. Chrome is more than happy to let her be all of those things, even when it means scrunching her face up unattractively and flinging her fists throughout the air. She leans forward, her hands resting along the table. "Do the vampires in those stories drink from the women they fall in love with?"   
  
"Sometimes..." Uncurling her fists, Haru crosses her arms. "It's really- well, it's really important," she finishes awkwardly. Even with how close she is with Chrome, it feels kind of - _awkward_ to say how sexual it's usually depicted in those stories about vampires. Haru hadn't really thought about that before, when she was talking excitedly about it to Chrome in the first place... She's usually perfectly fine when talking about it with Hana, who's so much more mature about these sorts of things. Maybe that's it, the difference in personalities between her two friends. And she's so much closer to Chrome besides!   
  
Oblivious to the cascade of thoughts tumbling through Haru's mind, Chrome considers the tail. "Well.... Then, would I be good enough?"   
  
"Ne?"   
  
Tilting her head to the side, hair slipping out of the way, Chrome points to the side of her neck, and Haru feels her heart slam into her chest. "Would I be good enough for you to drink blood from?"   
  
Haru feels her brain crash into pieces.   
  
After her brain has had a moment to restart, she flails her arms around. "Are you sure about that, Chrome-chan!? It might hurt a whole lot! And I don't want to drink so much from you that something terrible happens, like you fainting-!"   
  
"I'll be alright." Chrome shakes her head with a simple kind of fact - Haru never entirely knows whether to call it confidence or not. "If it's really like how you theorized, being Mist flames... I was thinking... I could probably substitute fake blood of my own."  
  
"Huh? Oh!" Haru lowers her hands. "I see...!" Of course. It was kind of an obvious solution, now that she thinks about it. Even if the bullet weren't embedded with Mist flames, then Chrome's abilities as a tried and true illusionist would probably still be the best case scenario here... She can make illusionary blood, just like she's made illusionary organs for herself, and that could possibly keep Haru well enough until the effects of the bullet wear off... and maybe even a little after, as she restocks her body's supply of nutrients the _natural_ way. "Well, you're sure, then?"   
  
"Mhm." Reaching up, Chrome begins to pull her hair back into a small ponytail, done up much like it used to be when Haru first got to know her. Haru barely remembers to remove the pot of water from the stove before she steps forward with a deep breath.   
  
Honestly... In her daydreams after reading vampire stories like those, she _does_ have to admit that she's occasionally thought of herself as more the vampire than the maiden in distress. They seemed to have just as tragic backstories as the guys, when they popped up in the stories, but it felt like she rarely came across tales that went into that. Of course she'd dream about the stories she would have to make up to fill that lack. Still, she'd never quite known how to approach the love interest angle... Is it alright if it's a cute girl like Chrome?   
  
While Haru languishes over this choice in her own head, Chrome finishes up her pontail and rests her hands on her lap. "I'm fine with it whenever you're ready," she tells Haru, closing her eyes. Somehow... That makes Haru's heart smack about in her chest even more.   
  
One of these days, _someone_ is going to realize how terribly cute Chrome is, Haru swears. It can't be just her that knows about it!  
  
But this is fine. This is just a friend helping a friend. Haru presses the flat of her tongue up against the roof of her mouth, and feels the way her teeth have changed - or, at least, she perceives them to have changed. Mist flames are rather annoying like that. Chrome's neck looks so pale and pretty... Haru shakes her head, and takes another breath. Okay. She can do this. Right?   
  
Haru manages to convince herself of this all the way up until she's right against Chrome's neck, and breathing in her scent. Anxiously, she curls her hands into tight fists at her side. Ever since Chrome stopped living completely at Kokuyo Land, she's started to smell so much nicer... She's started to get interested in little things to make herself happier, or just because she likes them. Perfume has been one of the things she's started to experiment with lately, and this... It's such a sweet scent, almost something like jasmine, but a little more subtle...  
  
Before she knows it, her lips are settled around the curve of Chrome's throat, and she digs her teeth in. She's not even thinking about whether or not to go hard, or slow, or any of that. She just sinks her fangs in, and feels Chrome's skin give way underneath her teeth. The blood wells up almost immediately under her tongue, and she gives a suck, hastily, not wanting to waste a single precious drop.   
  
At the bite, Chrome hadn't made so much as a peep.... but the suck? That earns a quiet little noise of _something_ , and it makes a spark of electricity rattle down Haru's spine. It's just... a side effect of the bullet, right? Haru can't think too much deeper than that, with the hunger panging in her gut demanding all of her attention. She just nuzzles up against Chrome, feeling her nose brush against the soft hair along her nape, and drinks in.   
  
Fortunately, it doesn't take very long before she's just sated enough to have returned to her senses, and Haru has just enough sense in her to unlatch her mouth from Chrome's neck before she jerks her head away. "Ah-! I'm sorry, Chrome-chan! That wasn't too much, was it!?"   
  
"No.... I'm fine." And sure enough, her face doesn't look overtly pale, like one would expect from a person that's just had their blood sucked out. Her skin is still a healthy color, although she seems to be blushing a lot more. Honestly, Haru can't judge her on that front... Her own cheeks are positively burning. "It wasn't that hard to give you illusionary blood... Hm, but can I go sit in the living room for a while? I don't want to move around too much..."   
  
"Of course!" Straightening up, Haru smacks her cheeks a couple of times, as if that will hide how pink they are. "And I'll get you the tea that I was going to make! Just hold on one moment, okay? Do you need help getting over there?"   
  
Chrome shakes her head. "I should be fine. I just don't want to walk home." With that, she gets up, maybe a little slowly, but nothing too serious. Haru still pokes her head out of the kitchen to carefully watch Chrome make her way into the living room. Right as Chrome disappears through the doorway, there's a foot tap, and she looks up at the stairs whose railings are right in front of her.  
  
"It looks like that got settled neatly," Reborn says, staying on the steps where he can glance down at Haru. Even though he's had a chance to grow, his body still hasn't reached that of an adolescent quite yet. Maybe it makes him feel better, to stand so high. Haru can still remember meeting him, balanced on the brick walls in her little neighborhood. "It's a good thing she happened to return, isn't it?"   
  
For a moment, Haru wonders if Reborn somehow called her ahead of time, or if it was pure luck, or if it happened to be a mixture of both. Well, it's as he said: it _did_ get settled neatly, no matter how much red her cheeks still feel. "Did you get the assassin taken care of?" she asks instead, since that's the most relevant thing. It wouldn't do for Tsuna or Maman to come back and still find the guy unconscious there in Tsuna's room.   
  
"No worries. We have some Vongola stationed nearby coming to pick him up, and get all of his secrets out of him." Haru decides not to ask much more about _that_. She long ago became well aware of what it meant to be a part of a mafia family, ever since she was fourteen. While maybe it's not right for someone her age to have knowledge of this sort of thing... She made her decision a long time ago to stick with it. Fortunately, maybe Reborn understands she needs a break every now and then too, especially after stumbling in on an assassination event, because he brings up something else entirely. "It looks like you and Chrome had a particularly intimate moment."   
  
Jeez... Sometimes, he really does come off as a kid, when he teases them like this. Haru puffs out her cheeks, and lowers her voice to make sure that Chrome doesn't overhear from within the living room. "Don't tease us!" she scolds lightly, because not even Reborn should be immune from the occasional scolding when he does things like this. "I'm sure Chrome-chan felt really awkward about having a girl so close to her!"   
  
Reborn only gives one of those enigmatic little smiles he's so fond of, and hasn't stopped making ever since she first met him. "So that's how you think she felt?" he says more than asks. Before Haru can question what he's talking about, he keeps going. "How did you feel then?"   
  
Ugh.... Haru scrunches up her mouth. He would ask about that... Trust Reborn to not miss a single thing. "I think the vampire bullet does more weird things than just make you want to drink blood," she says. "Or at least that particular variant has to. I felt like a real vampire lord drinking the blood of a fair maiden he adores!"   
  
She's expecting Reborn to make some sort of comment about how interesting that is, or ask her more about the effects she thinks the bullet might have had. Instead, he just raises an eyebrow at her. "You know, you don't have to be a vampire lord to adore a maiden," he says mildly.   
  
Haru's brain momentarily short circuits. When she gets it restarted again, she hastily glances back down the hallway towards where the living room is, hurries back into the kitchen to make sure the teapot is still getting hot, and then rushes back right to the stairs where she clutches at the railings. "What do you mean?" she whispers at Reborn hastily; she only has a few minutes until the water is hot enough for her to prepare the tea.   
  
There's just that enigmatic smile. "Bisexuality," he says simply. "Pansexuality. Biromantic asexual, or panromantic asexual. Polyamory. Those are the main ones, but you can find plenty of things if you do a little digging."   
  
Haru _immediately_ commits all of those to memory, using every little bit of her schooling to do engrave it onto her brain. But then the teapot whistles, and she rushes back to get her and Chrome's cups, and by the time she's done, Reborn has disappeared from the stairs. Well, that's fine. She has tea to serve, after all.... and a lot of things to consider.   
  
One of them is the gentle scent of Chrome's perfume, chasing her all the way into the living room.

**Author's Note:**

> As of a few days ago, I realized there were only 7 fics in this ship tag? I thought that there were SO much more. 
> 
> anyway, correcting that


End file.
